Atherectomy catheters are used to remove material from a blood vessel to open the blood vessel and improve blood flow through the vessel.
One problem that occurs when removing material from a blood vessel is that the material may be either soft or hard and may vary during the cutting process. As such, the cutting element should be able to cut both hard tissue and soft tissue.
The present invention is directed to a cutting element for an atherectomy catheter and methods of cutting material from a blood flow lumen using a rotating cutting element.